I'm leaning toward going with gplv3 but...

Dag-Erling Smørgrav des at des.no
Fri Aug 7 13:04:13 UTC 2009


Ben Tilly <btilly at gmail.com> writes:
> It should be noted that while that is the legal opinion of the FSF,
> there is no guarantee that a court will rule that way.  For an
> interesting alternative, the opinions of Linus on binary kernel
> modules is interesting.  See
> http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Kernel/proprietary-kernel-modules.html.
> While his answers to the question of binary kernel modules changes
> over time, he consistently holds to several principles:
>
> 1. Whether you're bound by the GPL depends on whether you're a
> derivative work of the Linux kernel.  Which will be true depending on
> the facts.
>
> 2. When the plugin API was a generic limited subset of standard Unix
> interfaces, there was no question that things which went against it
> were not derivative of Linux.
>
> 3. When the plugin API was later expanded to expose a lot of Linux
> specific details, things that use the full API become derivative of
> Linux.

I call bullshit.  You can't say that with one breath, and with the next
rejoice over winning a lawsuit on the grounds that interfaces are not
copyrightable [to oversimplify].

I would simply publish function prototypes and struct definitions for
the plugin interface under a permissive license (MIT or Simplified BSD).

DES
-- 
Dag-Erling Smørgrav - des at des.no



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